Interweaves two stories: John Harrison's forty-year obsession with building his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer; and naval officer Rupert Gould who, two hundred years later, stumbles across Harrison's forgotten chronometers and devotes himself to restoring Harrison's long-neglected mechanical masterpieces.

This fully illustrated edition of the international best-seller Longitude recounts in words and images the epic quest to solve the greatest scientific problem of the eighteenth and three prior centuries: determining how a captain could pinpoint his ship's location at sea. All too often, voyages ended in disaster when crew and cargo were either lost at sea or destroyed upon the rocks of an unexpected landfall. Thousands of lives and the fortunes of nations hung on a resolution. Governments established prizes for anyone whose method or device proved successful. The scientific establishment, certain that a celestial answer would be found, invested untold effort in this pursuit. By contrast, John Harrison built the unimaginable: a clock that told perfect time at sea, known today as the chronometer. Harrison's trials and tribulations during his forty-year quest to win the prize are the culmination of this remarkable story.--From publisher description.

Without longitude's guidance, navigation in the 1700s was unpredictable and deadly...until one man solved the mystery...a humble, ingenious country carpenter named John Harrison.

The story of mariners' centuries-long search for ways of determining longitude that tells not only of the scientific advances but of the perseverance, pettiness, politics, & interesting anecdotes involved. Longitude is the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest, and of John Harrison's forty-year obsession with building his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer. Full of heroism and chicanery, brilliance and the absurd, it is also a fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation, and clockmaking. Through Dava Sobel's consummate skill, Longitude will open a new window on our world for all who read it.

During the great age of exploration, the "longitude problem" was the gravest of scientific challenges. Without the ability to determine longitude, sailors and their ships were lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. In 1714, desperate for a solution, England's Parliament offered 20,000 pounds (the equivalent of millions of dollars today) to anyone who could solve the problem. With all the skill and storytelling ability of a great novelist, Dava Sobel captures the dramatic story at the heart of this epic scientific quest.